The Sounds of Silence

A Pinter room. Anyone who has seen almost any of Harold Pinter's plays will know exactly what that phrase means. A cold, unwelcoming, claustrophobic chamber, in which the inhabitants live in anticipation of a visitor  a threat to their dingy equilibrium. Pinter's plays have been performed all over the world, from Australia to China, and an awful lot of people have recognized those lonely rooms.

Despite the crashing failure in 1958 of his first full-length play The Birthday Party (it was pulled out of a London theater after just four performances, following catastrophic reviews), Harold Pinter has...